Many applications such as, calendar applications, voting applications, task list applications, gaming applications and package tracking applications are available on websites. Typically, a user has to login to the website hosting the application to access the application. It is inconvenient and time consuming for a user to visit and login to a website each time the user desires to access a particular application.
It is also difficult and inconvenient for users to collaborate with other users on websites that host standalone applications. The users who wish to collaborate with each other must maintain user accounts at the same website. This may make it difficult for the users to collaborate because some users may not want to go through the trouble of signing up for an account and some users may disagree on which website to use. The users who do not have an account will not be able to participate in the collaboration or even see useful information from the collaboration. For example, users without a user account at a website hosting a voting application would not be able to vote, see the voting options or see the result of the vote on the website. Users who have an account at a respective website and wish to collaborate with other users must take the time to locate the other users and verify the identities of the other users. For example, in a voting application, users must have some way of verifying that only authorized users are voting otherwise the voting result may be untrustworthy.
Websites that host applications may not provide a user with a record of a collaboration. Many websites may periodically delete the record to save resources or may only make the record available to a subset of users who were involved in the collaboration. For example, only the user who created a vote may have a record of the vote results. The record of the collaboration, depending on the website, may also be presented in many different ways and with varying degrees of detail. Some websites may not allow the record to be easily exported and thus when the website shuts down the record is lost.
Email is a widely used form of communication and collaboration. Accordingly, it would be highly desirable to have a way to have a user's email mailbox be a container for applications.